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MARTINSVILLE, Va. — Martin Truex Jr. may be out of the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs, but the veteran driver still has compelling goals, as he proved with a pole-winning run on Saturday at Martinsville Speedway.
After a final-round lap at 96.190 mph (19.686 seconds), Truex will start from the top spot in Sunday‘s Xfinity 500 (2 p.m. ET, NBC, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).
Behind him and next to him, six playoff drivers, led by second-place starter Chase Elliott, will begin their battle for the final two positions in the Nov. 10 Championship Race at Phoenix Raceway.
And at the opposite end of the spectrum, playoff driver Denny Hamlin, Truex‘s teammate, will start from the rear after a bizarre wreck in practice damaged his No. 11 Toyota, preventing him from making a qualifying run.
“I feel great about our car on stickers (new tires),” said Truex, who was 0.049 seconds faster than third-place starter William Byron, who posted a lap at 95.931 mph in the final round. “You never want to get too optimistic, but I fired off really good in practice, especially that second run with the track rubbered in.
“I was like ‘If we can just hit the balance here for qualifying, it should be really fast.‘”
Earlier this season, Truex announced he will retire from full-time racing at season‘s end.
“We‘ve got two more chances to win,” said Truex, who earned his third pole at Martinsville, his first of the season and the 24th of his career. “We want it bad, we‘re working hard, we‘re not giving up, and hopefully we can get it for everyone.”
RELATED: Sunday’s starting lineup | At-track photos: Martinsville
Though he was fifth fastest in the final round, Elliott starts second because he was the fastest of the five qualifiers in Group A. That left Byron in third, Chase Briscoe in fourth and Ty Gibbs in fifth.
Harrison Burton, Alex Bowman, Ryan Preece, Kyle Larson and Austin Dillon will start from positions six through 10 respectively. The three Hendrick Motorsports drivers — Elliott, Byron and Larson — are the only playoff drivers in the top 10 on the grid.
Other playoff drivers qualified as follows: Joey Logano (12th), Ryan Blaney (14th), Christopher Bell (16th) and Tyler Reddick (31st). Logano and Reddick already have qualified for the Championship 4 with respective victories at Las Vegas and Homestead-Miami.
As qualifying progressed, Hamlin‘s crew was trying to repair his primary car, which backed into the Turn 3 wall when the throttle stuck during practice, thanks to a chunk of rubber that found its way into the throttle body.
“We had just come back out, we had just made an adjustment to the car, and it was doing everything it needed to do,” Hamlin said. “It was maneuvering through the pack pretty well. I went into Turn 3, and the car just didn‘t slow down, and the throttle hung on us. The throttle had no chance to come backwards.
“That certainly caught me off guard, but it happens. We just got unlucky.”
Truex was sympathetic to his teammate‘s misfortune but wasn‘t worried about a similar circumstance on his car.
“About as much as I‘m concerned about getting hit by lightning,” Truex quipped. “One-in-a-million. I don‘t know how—his number just came up.”
Truex tops Cup Series practice at Martinsville
With Goodyear introducing a new left-side tire compound at Martinsville, NASCAR decided to run an extended 45-minute practice session to allow teams to collect tire data.
Before snagging the pole in qualifying, Martin Truex Jr. topped the leaderboard in practice at 95.070 mph over Corey LaJoie (94.989 mph) and Denny Hamlin (94.884 mph).
Christopher Bell (94.855 mph) and Chase Elliott (94.836 mph) rounded out the top five.
MORE: Practice results
Ty Gibbs (94.789 mph), Chase Briscoe (94.689 mph), Todd Gilliland (94.685 mph), Austin Dillon (94.482 mph) and Daniel Suárez (94.463 mph) completed the top 10.
Playoff driver Hamlin entered Martinsville 18 points below the elimination line, but his path to the Championship 4 got tougher as the No. 11 JGR Toyota crashed in Turn 3 during practice.
WATCH: Hamlin reacts to practice crash
Hamlin told his crew on the radio that the throttle stuck which caused him to spin and back his car into the wall. He will start Sunday’s Xfinity 500 from the back of the field after skipping qualifying for his team to repair the rear damage.
Contributing: Staff reports
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